Nonlinear Flow in Porous Media - Numerical Solution of the Navier-Stokes System with Two Pressures and Application to Paper Making

The aim of the thesis is the numerical investigation of saturated, stationary, incompressible Newtonian flow in porous media when inertia is not negligible. We focus our attention to the Navier-Stokes system with two pressures derived by two-scale homogenization. The thesis is subdivided into five Chapters. After the introductory remarks on porous media, filtration laws and upscaling methods, the first chapter is closed by stating the basic terminology and mathematical fundamentals. In Chapter 2, we start by formulating the Navier-Stokes equations on a periodic porous medium. By two-scale expansions of the velocity and pressure, we formally derive the Navier-Stokes system with two pressures. For the sake of completeness, known existence and uniqueness results are repeated and a convergence proof is given. Finally, we consider Stokes and Navier-Stokes systems with two pressures with respect to their relation to Darcy's law. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 are devoted to the numerical solution of the nonlinear two pressure system. Therefore, we follow two approaches. The first approach which is developed in Chapter 3 is based on a splitting of the Navier-Stokes system with two pressures into micro and macro problems. The splitting is achieved by Taylor expanding the permeability function or by discretely computing the permeability function. The problems to be solved are a series of Stokes and Navier-Stokes problems on the periodicity cell. The Stokes problems are solved by an Uzawa conjugate gradient method. The Navier-Stokes equations are linearized by a least-squares conjugate gradient method, which leads to the solution of a sequence of Stokes problems. The macro problem consists of solving a nonlinear uniformly elliptic equation of second order. The least-squares linearization is applied to the macro problem leading to a sequence of Poisson problems. All equations will be discretized by finite elements. Numerical results are presented at the end of Chapter 3. The second approach presented in Chapter 4 relies on the variational formulation in a certain Hilbert space setting of the Navier-Stokes system with two pressures. The nonlinear problem is again linearized by the least-squares conjugate gradient method. We obtain a sequence of Stokes systems with two pressures. For the latter systems, we propose a fast solution method which relies on pre-computing Stokes systems on the periodicity cell for finite element basis functions acting as right hand sides. Finally, numerical results are discussed. In Chapter 5 we are concerned with modeling and simulation of the pressing section of a paper machine. We state a two-dimensional model of a press nip which takes into account elasticity and flow phenomena. Nonlinear filtration laws are incorporated into the flow model. We present a numerical solution algorithm and the chapter is closed by a numerical investigation of the model with special focus on inertia effects.